E.G. West Centrehttp://egwestcentre.com
markets and self organising systems in educationMon, 16 Feb 2015 20:17:03 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/5fb24a7fd6491ec97a42feb45c708794?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngE.G. West Centrehttp://egwestcentre.com
Alumnihttp://egwestcentre.com/2015/02/11/alumni/
http://egwestcentre.com/2015/02/11/alumni/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 11:59:20 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=3176]]>Students who have studied the MA in International development and Education have gone on the work in different fields. Here is some of their news:]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2015/02/11/alumni/feed/0jamesboydstanfieldThe staggering cost of public education in India by Lant Pritchett and Yamini Aiyarhttp://egwestcentre.com/2014/12/16/the-staggering-cost-of-public-education-in-india/
http://egwestcentre.com/2014/12/16/the-staggering-cost-of-public-education-in-india/#commentsTue, 16 Dec 2014 17:25:33 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=3111]]>The average cost of educating a student in private school is Rs. 5,961 and the accounting costs in government schools are Rs. 14,615, while achieving lower learning. Taking learning into account suggests the excess cost of achieving the existing private learning outcomes at public sector costs are Rs. 232,000 crores or nearly US$50 billion.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2014/12/10/james-tooley-interview-with-bryan-callum/feed/0Ep177-James-Tooley[1]jamesboydstanfieldEp177-James-Tooley[1]What can the American and British education systems learn from classrooms in the developing world?http://egwestcentre.com/2014/08/15/what-can-the-american-and-british-education-systems-learn-from-classrooms-in-the-developing-world/
http://egwestcentre.com/2014/08/15/what-can-the-american-and-british-education-systems-learn-from-classrooms-in-the-developing-world/#commentsFri, 15 Aug 2014 12:46:56 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/2014/08/15/what-can-the-american-and-british-education-systems-learn-from-classrooms-in-the-developing-world/TED Blog:Students in Karakati, India, research the answer to a big question at a location of Sugata Mitra’s School in the Cloud. According to Mitra and his Microsoft Work Wonders Project partner, Adam Braun, there’s quite a bit that Western schools can learn from classrooms in the developing…]]>

Adam Braun went to school in the US and now runs a nonprofit that builds schools in Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In contrast, Sugata Mitra—the winner of the 2013 TED Prize—went to school in India and now is a professor in the UK, where his research on self-directed learning routinely brings him into elementary schools. Both of these education activists have seen how typical classrooms function in the Western world, and both have seen how typical classrooms function in the developing world. And both say, the West isn’t always better.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2014/08/15/what-can-the-american-and-british-education-systems-learn-from-classrooms-in-the-developing-world/feed/0Featured Image -- 3076jamesboydstanfieldTwo educators, two very different visions, one question: How can tech help us rethink education in the developing world?http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/two-educators-two-very-different-visions-one-question-how-can-tech-help-us-rethink-education-in-the-developing-world/
http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/two-educators-two-very-different-visions-one-question-how-can-tech-help-us-rethink-education-in-the-developing-world/#commentsSat, 07 Jun 2014 19:47:34 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/two-educators-two-very-different-visions-one-question-how-can-tech-help-us-rethink-education-in-the-developing-world/TED Blog:Take two education activists with very different theories — and give them a chance to work together on a goal they both care about. That’s the thinking in the video above, the kick-off of Microsoft’s new Work Wonders project, which pairs up unlikely collaborators to…]]>

Take two education activists with very different theories — and give them a chance to work together on a goal they both care about. That’s the thinking in the video above, the kick-off of Microsoft’s new Work Wonders project, which pairs up unlikely collaborators to spark new ideas. Watch as TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra joins forces with TEDx speaker Adam Braun to tackle a bold mission: Use technology to rethink education in severely underserved communities.

They’re a bit of an odd couple. Mitra, who created the School in the Cloud to enable kids to explore questions that matter to them on their own, believes that traditional schools are becoming more and more obsolete; meanwhile Braun, who founded Pencils of Promise to rally communities in the developing world to build schools, believes that traditional classrooms are the answer to opening up opportunity.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/two-educators-two-very-different-visions-one-question-how-can-tech-help-us-rethink-education-in-the-developing-world/feed/0Featured Image -- 3033jamesboydstanfieldSugata Mitra TED Prize update: Preview the School in the Cloud documentary — and a new web platform for learninghttp://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/sugata-mitra-ted-prize-update-preview-the-school-in-the-cloud-documentary-and-a-new-web-platform-for-learning/
http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/sugata-mitra-ted-prize-update-preview-the-school-in-the-cloud-documentary-and-a-new-web-platform-for-learning/#commentsSat, 07 Jun 2014 19:45:37 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/sugata-mitra-ted-prize-update-preview-the-school-in-the-cloud-documentary-and-a-new-web-platform-for-learning/TED Blog:By Natasha Scripture Sugata Mitra thinks big. At last year’s TED, he unveiled his dream to transform primary education. Instead of a teacher, a chalkboard and a generic curriculum, the recipient of the 2013 TED Prize asked us to imagine an environment that empowered children…]]>

Sugata Mitra thinks big. At last year’s TED, he unveiled his dream to transform primary education. Instead of a teacher, a chalkboard and a generic curriculum, the recipient of the 2013 TED Prize asked us to imagine an environment that empowered children to learn on their own, with the guidance of virtual mentors. [ted_talkteaser id=1678]It involved nothing more than a few computers, an Internet connection and a bunch of curious minds. He called this utopian world School in the Cloud, a Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE), or simply put, a place where children could tap into their innate sense of wonder by connecting with information online.

A year later, Mitra returned to the TED stage to give an update. He has opened five learning labs — three in India and two in the UK — with two more slated to open in May. Mitra is also the…

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2014/06/07/sugata-mitra-ted-prize-update-preview-the-school-in-the-cloud-documentary-and-a-new-web-platform-for-learning/feed/2Featured Image -- 3029jamesboydstanfieldSchools in the cloud. Learning without teachers. It couldn’t happen, could it?http://egwestcentre.com/2014/02/19/schools-in-the-cloud-learning-without-teachers-it-couldnt-happen-could-it/
http://egwestcentre.com/2014/02/19/schools-in-the-cloud-learning-without-teachers-it-couldnt-happen-could-it/#commentsWed, 19 Feb 2014 14:45:19 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=3010]]>Sugata Mitra’s concept of Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLE) raises a number of challenging questions, including ‘Can learning can happen without teachers?’. This was recently the subject of a seminar organised by Cambidge Assessment titled ‘Schools in the cloud. Learning without teachers. It couldn’t happen, could it?’ The event took place at the British Library in London and was attended by more than 100 people, with many more participating from around the world through online streaming.

The following profile of James Tooley written by Peter Wilby appeared in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday 12th November 2013.

In January 2000, James Tooley, then working as a consultant for an arm of the World Bank, left his five-star hotel in Hyderabad, India, to see the Charminar, described in the guidebooks as the city’s “must see” attraction. As his autorickshaw proceeded through middle-class suburbs, he was struck by the ubiquity of private schools. But the Charminar, a triumphal arch built in 1591, stands at the heart of the old city slums. And, to Tooley’s surprise, the private schools didn’t thin out as he passed through poorer areas. When he continued his journey on foot, deeper into the slums, “there seemed to be a private school on every street corner”.

These were not, with a few exceptions, philanthropic concerns run by charities. They were private, profit-making enterprises, run by local entrepreneurs and charging rock-bottom fees to poor parents. Nor, it turned out, were they confined to Hyderabad. As Tooley went elsewhere in Africa and Asia – to Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, even China – he found similar schools. He ventured down stinking alleyways, stepped through open sewers, tramped to remote villages. Poor parents, exasperated by the failings or even non-existence of state education, had exerted “people power” and achieved what Tooley calls “grassroots privatisation”.

In nearly every case, he discovered, these schools, though they relied largely on unqualified teachers receiving minimal salaries, outperformed the state schools. Most remarkably, state education officials and aid agencies denied their very existence. Yet many schools had started at least a decade earlier and, in India, similar schools existed 200 years ago, only to be wiped out by British colonialists.

In and around Madras in the 1820s, according to documents Tooley found in London archives, a “deep-rooted and extensive” education system covered 25% of the male school-age population, a level then comparable to most European countries. Around Bombay, “hardly a village, great or small” lacked a school. Even more amazingly, Indian schools used an “economical” teaching method whereby older pupils taught younger ones. This method was supposedly invented in Britain by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster. But as Tooley tells it, they plagiarised it from India.

Tooley, now professor of education at Newcastle University, tells the story in his book The Beautiful Tree – the title is from Mahatma Gandhi’s metaphor for indigenous Indian schooling, which he accused the British of uprooting – first published in 2009 and just out in paperback. It is written with verve, humour and suspense. When I met Tooley in Newcastle, I said his views echoed those of the de-schooler Ivan Illich, whose work excited the western left in the 1970s. In a lecture in 2005, Tooley said that “as the market develops … education will become organically linked again into … family homes, workplaces, sports centres, town halls, reading rooms in pubs, debating chambers, book stores … but you won’t see the youth ghettos we call schools and colleges”.

Tooley told me Illich had indeed been an influence. At a Bristol comprehensive in the 1970s, from which he eventually dropped out without completing his A-levels, he was taught by “a radical de-schooler who started a folk club where I wrote anti-school songs”. Though his parents were Conservatives, he was a lefty as a young man and once joined the Labour party. After eventually taking his A-levels privately and then a maths degree at Sussex University, he travelled to Zimbabwe to teach and to assist, of all people, Robert Mugabe, in building socialism.

Tooley, 54, is charming, jolly and generous, and nobody who knows him doubts his sincerity and his genuine enthusiasm for what are, rather ambiguously, called “low-cost private schools”. Nor would anyone now seriously dispute the existence of such schools or even their frequent superiority to neighbouring state schools, though the scale of the superiority is disputed.

But some would say that as far as state education is concerned, Tooley is a dangerous character. He has been described as “the high priest of privatised education in Britain” and, by Stephen Ball, a professor at London University’s Institute of Education, as “a policy entrepreneur par excellence”. The Beautiful Tree misleads the reader – Tooley insists this was unintentional and blames the editors – into thinking that, in 2000, he was still a socialist by conviction who had somehow drifted into working for the World Bank and was converted in Hyderabad to the glories of private education. In fact, he was already a leading advocate of privatisation who founded the education unit at the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs in the mid-1990s.

Though he described the Hyderabad visit as “my epiphany, when the bits of my life came together”, the Damascene moment, he said, occurred much earlier at the Institute of Education in London when, during PhD studies, he read EG West’s Education and the State, a sacred text for free marketeers. It argued that, long before the 1870 Education Act established compulsory state education, the majority of English children were literate, thanks to private and voluntary schools. Tooley found private schools in Hyderabad because he wanted to find them, having accepted the West thesis that, in the early 19th century, they were doing a brilliant job in England and would do so again if the state stepped aside.

Now he has become an investor in private schools, remortgaging his house and sinking his savings into schools for the poor in the developing world. He initially linked with Orient Global, founded by the New Zealand-born billionaire Richard Chandler who specialises in investing in developing economies, to work in China and India. He soon broke with Chandler, but refuses to talk about the details – except to say, in future, he will be more wary of men with Boeing 737s – and concentrated on building Omega Schools with a local partner in Ghana. The company opened its first schools in 2009, and now has 40, with 20,000 pupils. Tooley predicts 100 schools with 50,000 pupils next year.

Last year, Pearson, owner of the Financial Times and the world’s biggest educational publisher, took a stake in the company, allowing it to expand throughout Ghana. Pearson’s chief education adviser is Sir Michael Barber, formerly a top aide to Tony Blair and an old friend of Tooley’s from when both men were teaching and building socialism in Zimbabwe.

Tooley is cagey about the business model, but says he hasn’t taken any money out of the company and doesn’t draw a salary. Nevertheless, he is “relaxed” about his partner becoming rich and thinks Pearson “is excited by this market”. He insists that the daily fee, the equivalent of about 40p per child, is not only affordable to poor parents but no dearer than state schools. “It covers everything, including lunch, two uniforms, workbooks and a bag. The state schools charge for extras, so many parents see the costs as identical.” They choose his school because it is better value, with the average pupil’s reading (according to Tooley) well ahead of his or her peers in government schools.

“They see teachers arriving at the government school at 11am and leaving at 12. They see them sitting outside and not actually teaching while the children are sent on errands. In a private school, there’s an owner and, if the teachers don’t turn up, they’ll be fired.” As in the private schools he discovered, Tooley’s teachers are largely unqualified and on low wages. “They are typically high school graduates. Some are saving up to go to university or doing it for idealistic reasons as I was in Zimbabwe. We create everything they need centrally – lesson plans, workbooks, exercises – and give them a three-week crash course.”

Tooley believes this bargain-basement education offers the best hope for the future of the developing world. Aid agencies, he says, should switch funds to supporting such schools rather than subsidising state systems which, despite the billions poured into them, still fail.

These views are bitterly contested. Education, critics argue, should be a right, not a commodity for which parents pay. The biggest educational gains in Africa and Asia followed the spread of free public education; the future lies in spreading it further and making it better, not in propping up a private sector that can never guarantee universal coverage, equity or consistent standards and usually excludes those in the most extreme poverty. “Every dollar households spend on school fees,” says Prof Keith Lewin of Sussex University’s centre for international education, “is a dollar less to spend on health, clean water, food and shelter. So fee-paying private schools increase poverty directly.”

An exhaustive study of the evidence, recently completed by Claire Mcloughlin, a senior research fellow in international development at Birmingham University, reports that, while rigorous studies such as Tooley’s find privately educated pupils doing better than peers in government schools, even after socio-economic background is taken into account, “other [albeit fewer] studies find the opposite”. The findings, Mcloughlin says, “are inconclusive”.

Nevertheless, private school chains are spreading across the world. Pearson has also invested in Kenya’s Bridge chain, which opens 2.5 schools a day and now has more branches than any other Kenyan business.

The remainder of this profile can be found on the Guardian website. The comments on the Guardian website also provide a useful insight into the nature of this debate.

Bruce Whitfield (Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria) chats to Dr Pauline Dixon, E.G. West Centre, Newcastle University, on low-cost private education in the slums of India, Nigeria and Kenya and why these models work for entrepreneurs and scholars.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/11/07/pauline-dixon-wins-prestigious-award-in-south-africa/feed/0paulineawardjamesboydstanfieldPauline Dixon receives award in South Africahttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/23/2862/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/23/2862/#commentsMon, 23 Sep 2013 09:43:51 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2862]]>For thirteen years, Dr Dixon has been following her passion studying and researching the availability, provision and standards of education in low-income communities throughout the world. Her findings and those of Professor James Tooley and the team from the EG West Centre at the University of Newcastle are extraordinary.

The purpose behind the project, Dr Dixon explained , was to examine the general assumptions that ‘private schools must be for the elite, that the only way the poor can gain an education is if it is provided free by government, and that, if private schooling is provided to the poor, it is of low quality.

‘The only way to find out the truth,’ Dr Dixon told us, ‘is to carry out research and what we found, Professor Tooley and I, definitely throws such assumptions out of the window. Research from developing countries around the world is showing a burgeoning low cost private schools’ sector.’

According to FMF Board member, Nic Frangos, no better example exists in any area of human endeavour than this project that demonstrates how efficiently and beneficently the free market system delivers what people need, no matter their status and this is the reason why the FMF had decided to present a Luminary Award to Dr Dixon.
Dr Dixon, when accepting the award, said, ‘This Award recognises more the work and effort put in by all the kids and the people who teach them than our research. We see so much good in poor areas where markets are vibrant and people are working to find ways to obtain what they want and need and not sitting around waiting for the government to do something.”

In carrying out the project, Dr Dixon and the team set out to investigate whether private schooling existed in poor areas and, if it did, what it was like. Often they were told there were no private schools or only a small number existed, but, on foot, they made their way up each and every alley in numerous low income and shanty towns in urban areas of Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, India and China looking for schools. They found, quite amazingly, that in almost every area they visited, around 60% of the schools were low cost private schools with around 65% to 70% of children in the area attending them.

Some schools were registered and therefore known, others not and therefore they and the students enrolled in them were not included in official reporting figures. In some cases there were three to four schools down one small lane which meant that competition is rife. Competition stimulates innovation and quality so the owners and teachers maintain good standards in order to compete.

As far as quality of education was concerned, Dr Dixon said, ‘We have tested around 32,000 children in Africa and Asia who attend government and low cost private schools. The subjects we examine are maths, English and home language. After controlling for school choice, family background and innate ability, we find the children in these affordable private schools outperform those in government schools at a fraction of the teacher cost. The children are typically one to two years ahead of their government school counterparts.

‘Why? Because competition regulates the quality of education, it motivates schools to deliver the best quality of teaching and to charge fees that are acceptable to the community. Fee paying parents have the power to hold teachers accountable for the standard of education their children receive and the option to move their children to another school if they are not satisfied. Our research reveals that at private schools, whether registered or not, classes tend to be smaller, teachers more attentive to the children’s needs and absent for fewer days than at government schools.’

‘Teachers in private schools are passionate about what they do. They can also be fired by the school entrepreneur if they don’t perform. There are no teacher unions in the low cost private school sector, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem as these schools have grown organically from within the communities themselves, so not only is the school owner (typically the headteacher) from the neighbourhood but so are the teachers.’

Low cost private schools charge around R30 to R50 per month and are frequented by children of illiterate parents, generally making minimum wages as taxi drivers, market stall holders and daily wage earners. In post conflict zones such as Sierra Leone, Dixon and Tooley found that, somewhat understandably, 89% of schools are private and 82% of children go to private schools. Parents, even if they are illiterate and innumerate, know what they want for their children, and are prepared to pay to get what they want.

When asked how the schools manage to keep their fees so low that they are affordable to low-income parents, Dr Dixon explained that the school accommodation and amenities are modest and teachers get paid one-quarter to one-third of the salaries paid to government school teachers. The lower pay of the teachers is largely due to the fact that they do not have the qualifications of the teachers in the government schools and that they live and work in the community.

Dr Dixon warned that when government promised ‘free’, it did not necessarily mean free. Pupils at government schools are often expected to wear a uniform, they have to buy their own books and stationery, pay transport costs, and parents are not encouraged to participate in school policy decisions. Private schools do not demand uniforms, provide what materials they can, and are situated near to homes easily accessible to students and their parents.

Based on the findings of the research of the EG West Centre, government and international aid agencies are trying to step in. But, Dr Dixon feels, they must not interfere, or be very careful how they decide to participate. The market in education is working well, regulated by competition.

What are the implications for South Africa? Dr Dixon says that some research already shows that low cost private schools for the poor exist in this country. She recommends, ‘What is desperately needed is an environment that allows low cost private schools a space to grow. And, like anywhere else, anyone getting involved in the provision of education for the poor must find ways to use available resources to develop policy, ask the poor what they want, and encourage entrepreneurship and not dependency.’

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/23/2862/feed/1jamesboydstanfieldAre education vouchers the best solution for overseas aid to schools?http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/16/are-education-vouchers-the-best-solution-for-overseas-aid-to-schools/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/16/are-education-vouchers-the-best-solution-for-overseas-aid-to-schools/#commentsMon, 16 Sep 2013 15:54:21 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2845]]>In a recent article in the Spectator, Harry Phibbs argues that school vouchers are the best use for overseas aid and he concludes with the following statement:

DFID is now funding education vouchers in Punjab and Sindh, and helping creating a better business environment for private schools in a number of other countries, including Nigeria. These schools are often subject to regulatory harassment by state officials, forcing them to stay small to avoid being noticed by the authorities and preventing investment to improve quality. In some ways it is curious that the British government favours education vouchers for parents in Lagos or Hyderabad, but not for Liverpool or Hull. Nevertheless, the shift in policy is very welcome. The coalition government should not boast about spending more on aid, but on spending it more wisely. Nothing could be more effective than education vouchers.

This article helps to shed light on an interesting phenomenon – the fact that many national governments across the developing world have been restricting the growth and development of private schools with one hand, while pleading for more international aid to help build more government schools with the other. The end result is that instead of children being enrolled in a rapidly expanding private sector, they are now forced to wait until the government opens a new school in their local area. And if no government school appears, then these children will remain out of school. This begs the question – could it be that national governments in developing countries are now the largest barrier to achieving education for all? While governments are often accused of not doing enough in education could it be that they are intervening far too much and therefore not allowing the sector as a whole to grow and develop from the bottom up?

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/16/are-education-vouchers-the-best-solution-for-overseas-aid-to-schools/feed/1spectatorjamesboydstanfieldWhat Affordable Private Schools Teach Us About Social Enterprise, Hila Mehrhttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/13/what-affordable-private-schools-teach-us-about-social-enterprise-hila-mehr/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/13/what-affordable-private-schools-teach-us-about-social-enterprise-hila-mehr/#commentsFri, 13 Sep 2013 08:13:34 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2813]]>The hype around social enterprises often trumps a deeper investigation and critique of the challenges facing those organizations. After spending nine months exploring affordable private schools (APS) and social enterprise in India, I’ve noticed a number of challenges with APS that also apply to social enterprises more broadly. Below, I discuss three critiques and myths about affordable private schools, and offer some lessons that those working in the social enterprise ecosystem can take into consideration for their own work.

Accountability

James Tooley, one of the foremost scholars and champions of APS, argues that APS are a great model for education because they are based on market and behavioral economics. In government schools, the government pays teachers regardless of their impact on learning outcomes, and students attend for free. Therefore, the argument follows, government schools have no accountability to provide quality education. Champions of APS argue that because parents pay schools fees for student attendance, and teachers are paid by the school, the school and teachers are more accountable to provide quality education.

But my on-the-ground experience with APS has shown that accountability isn’t always in place at APS and is more complex than many recognize.

Unlike consumers of everyday products–where consumers can buy a product and whether they use it or not once they’ve purchased it is of no harm to the company–accountability in APS, and in education broadly, actually needs to work both ways. It takes not just the school owner and teachers, but also the parents to make accountability work.

The best example of this is persistent parent failure to pay school fees—a difficult problem that school owners constantly lament. If fees are not paid on time or in full, it creates a number of monthly and annual financial sustainability problems for the school that affects the hiring of quality teachers, extracurricular opportunities, and service provider payment.

Most parents struggle to pay fees not out of choice but because their low, irregular wages make paying monthly fees difficult. In other cases, parents have the money but don’t bother to pay on time, or fathers pocket the money for alcohol (schools like to note that working mothers typically, and proudly, pay fees whenever they can). In either case, the school owner is often too lenient and waves or delays fee payment because they recognize the circumstances of the community they are working with. Currently, there are no mechanisms in place to make parents accountable to the school to pay fees on time and in full (regardless of individual circumstance) beyond preventing students from taking exams, or in drastic cases, kicking students out of school. Every exam period, parents flood to the school to argue for a fee waiver, or pay just in time for their child to take the exam.

Some argue that fees ultimately even out at the end of the year, but that doesn’t help when teacher salaries and service providers depend on monthly payments. Parents then complain about the quality of the school, but when they don’t pay fees, they are also accountable for the school’s limitations.

Help with Accountability: Social enterprises should put programs in place to help their beneficiaries become more accountable. In the APS context, this could mean financial education or job training programs for APS parents to help them make more regular payments, or stricter fee payment tracking and policies. For a health organization, this could mean creating an accountability feedback loop to ensure that beneficiaries are regularly taking their medicine or getting tested.

Enrollment and Quality Service

One common argument used in favor of affordable private schools is that parents know which schools are the best and this creates a free market for school choice–the best schools will rise to the top and the others won’t have customers. In addition, some, such as education panelists at theKhemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in December 2012, argue that parents use enrollment as an indicator to know which schools are the best. I have come to believe that this is flawed logic.

While it’s true that parents do discuss schools with others in the community, ultimately, I’ve found that school choice comes down to location, peer pressure, and fees. Parents willing to pay a substantial portion of their already low-income care about their children and their education more than anything else. But the vast majority of parents that send their children to APS are also a product of APS or government schools themselves, and don’t know how to evaluate a quality education that teaches English accurately and the skills necessary for the middle-class careers their children aspire towards. And unfortunately, they too often fall prey to the myth that private, English-medium education is better than government school education, even when that may not always be the case for the schools in their neighborhood.

The reality that I’ve observed is that parents make school decisions based on local factors. Many parents experience pressure from the school owner, who may be a neighbor, relative, or family friend, to send their children to their school. If you ask some parents why they send their children to a particular school, they will often mention the influence of the school owner in their decision-making. Another factor is school availability in neighborhoods. In more densely populated areas there may be several APS to choose from. But in other areas, between the choice of the local government school and two local APS, many parents may often choose whichever one is closer to home or which has lower fees for convenience (or a school owner more lenient with fee payment). After narrowing down choices based on these local factors, parents often look at issues such as whether the school has a computer lab or playground.

In addition, higher enrollment does not signify better quality education. Schools with fee troubles will try to increase enrollment to gain more fees, but schools with fee problems tend to have a number of educational quality problems as well. And in some cases, higher enrollment can even mean worse education due to crowded classrooms and lack of teacher attention to individual students due to higher teacher-student ratios.

Numbers served does not signify quality: The number of people a social enterprise serves does not equate to quality service or a “better” social enterprise. Beneficiaries of social enterprises may be using a social enterprise’s service not because they are the best, but because they are the only option around or because of local pressures. Yes, perhaps this means a social enterprise is meeting a local need, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily providing a quality service.

Impact Assessment

Assessors of APS often look at the number of students that pass their final State Board exams after 10th class. This is a problematic evaluation metric for education, and ignores the fact that APS spend the entire year teaching students to memorize curriculum and test questions in order to take these exams.

Others have tried to be more creative in school assessment. India-based Gray Matters Capital created a ranking mechanism to assess APS on a number of factors including school infrastructure, parent evaluations, school finances, and learning outcomes, from which they conduct analysis on APS and provide information of the ranking to schools. But their assessment mechanism is focused on school conditions and learning outcomes, and the accuracy of the evaluation has mixed reviews, in my own opinion. (Full disclosure: the Gray Matters Capital Foundation, a parent organization of Gray Matters Capital, sponsored my fellowship in India.)

Instead (or perhaps, in addition) there needs to be more focus on post-APS statistics. If a value proposition of APS is that they provide better quality education and ultimately upward mobility for low-income Indian youth, then there needs to be an assessment of where students go after they attend an APS. How many graduate from Intermediate, from college, and from a post-graduate program? How many dropout and why? How many work as engineers and doctors, and how many take over the family kirana shop or become drivers or maids like their parents? Of course, this data is also valuable when compared to government schools. What are the statistics on graduation and employment for government students compared to APS students? Impact assessment of schools needs to go beyond immediate outcomes, but this hasn’t be done because schools don’t keep in touch with or track alumni in a formal manner.

Rethink Impact Assessment: We need to be more creative with how we assess the impact of social enterprises. One form of impact assessment that is becoming more popular is Most Significant Change, which involves various levels of stakeholders deciding what to measure and collecting stories of significant change from the field, and then forming teams to evaluate the stories and the value of the reported changes. But even when focusing on more quantitative data, impact assessors should look long-term and judge by what happens to beneficiaries after they leave a program.

Social enterprises are constantly adapting and improving. This requires those of us working in social enterprise to test out and offer solutions, as well as be more honest and critical of the solutions we are working with. The problems facing affordable private schools can serve as examples to think more critically about our social innovations in order to improve them.

This blog was previously published by the author on her website on March 23rd 2013.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/09/13/what-affordable-private-schools-teach-us-about-social-enterprise-hila-mehr/feed/0Low cost private schooljamesboydstanfieldAdvent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education – by Sugata Mitrahttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/06/17/advent-of-google-means-we-must-rethink-our-approach-to-education-by-sugata-mitra/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/06/17/advent-of-google-means-we-must-rethink-our-approach-to-education-by-sugata-mitra/#commentsMon, 17 Jun 2013 11:09:56 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2720]]>We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past which are no longer relevant on a curriculum for today’s children.

Would a person with good handwriting, spelling and grammar and instant recall of multiplication tables be considered a better candidate for a job than, say, one who knows how to configure a peer-to-peer network of devices, set up an organisation-wide Google calendar and find out where the most reliable sources of venture capital are, I wonder? The former set of skills are taught in schools, the latter are not.

We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past. Longhand multiplication of numbers using paper and pencil is considered a worthy intellectual achievement. Using a mobile phone to multiply is not. But to the people who invented it, longhand multiplication was just a convenient technology. I don’t think they attached any other emotions to it. We do, and it is still taught as a celebration of the human intellect. The algorithms that make Google possible are not taught to children. Instead, they are told: “Google is full of junk.”

In school examinations, learners must reproduce facts from memory, solve problems using their minds and paper alone. They must not talk to anyone or look at anyone else’s work. They must not use any educational resources, certainly not the internet. When they complete their schooling and start a job, they are told to solve problems in groups, through meetings, using every resource they can think of. They are rewarded for solving problems this way â€“ for not using the methods they were taught in school.

The curriculum lists things that children must learn. There is no list stating why these things are important. A child being taught the history of Vikings in England says to me: “We could have found out all that in five minutes if we ever needed to.”

One of the teachers who works with me said to her class of nine-year-olds: “There is something called electromagnetic radiation that we can’t see, can you figure out what it is?” The children huddle around a few computers, talking, running around and looking for clues. In about 40 minutes, they figure out the basics of electromagnetism and start relating it to mobile signals. This is called a self-organised learning environment, a Sole. In a Sole, children work in self-organised groups of four or five clustered around an internet connected computer. They can talk, change group, move around, look at other groups’ work and so on.

One of them says: “Aren’t we going to do any work?”

“What do you think you were doing?” asks the teacher.

“Learning about electromagnetism.”

“What’s work, then?”

“Work is when you say things to us and we write them down.”

Methods from centuries ago may seem romantic, but they do get obsolete and need to be replaced. The brain remembers good things from the past and creates a pleasant memory of the “good old days”. It forgets the rest. It is dangerous to build a present using vague memories of the good old days.

Any standard room in a Holiday Inn is better than the best facilities in an emperor’s room in the 15th century. Air conditioning, hot and cold running water, toilets that flush, TV and the internet. The middle class lives better today than any emperor ever did. Going back to horse-drawn vehicles is not the solution to our traffic problems and pollution. Beating children into submission will not solve the problem of educational disengagement.

If examinations challenge learners to solve problems the way they are solved in real life today, the educational system will change for ever. It is a small policy change that is required. Allow the use of the internet and collaboration during an examination.

If we did that to exams, the curriculum would have to be different. We would not need to emphasise facts or figures or dates. The curriculum would have to become questions that have strange and interesting answers. “Where did language come from?”, “Why were the pyramids built?”, “Is life on Earth sustainable?”, “What is the purpose of theatre?”

Questions that engage learners in a world of unknowns. Questions that will occupy their minds through their waking hours and sometimes their dreams.

Teaching in an environment where the internet and discussion are allowed in exams would be different. The ability to find things out quickly and accurately would become the predominant skill. The ability to discriminate between alternatives, then put facts together to solve problems would be critical. That’s a skill that future employers would admire immensely.

In this kind of self-organised learning, we don’t need the same teachers all the time. Any teacher can cause any kind of learning to emerge. A teacher does not need to be physically present, she could be a projected, life-sized image on the wall. A “Granny Cloud” of such volunteer teachers have been operating out of the UK and a few other countries into schools in India and South America for more than five years, using a combination of the internet and admiration to provide a meaningful education for children. We don’t need to improve schools. We need to reinvent them for our times, our requirements and our future. We don’t need efficient clerks to fuel an administrative machine that is no longer needed. Machines will do that for us. We need people who can think divergently, across outdated “disciplines”, connecting ideas across the entire mass of humanity. We need people who can think like children.

Sugata Mitra is professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, and the winner of the $1m TED Prize 2013. He devised the Hole in the Wall experiment, where a computer was embedded in a wall in a slum in Delhi for children to use freely. He aimed to prove young people could be taught computers easily without formal training.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/06/17/advent-of-google-means-we-must-rethink-our-approach-to-education-by-sugata-mitra/feed/0google+jamesboydstanfieldJames Tooley: How the World’s Poor Get a Good Education from Markets (podcast)http://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/10/james-tooley-how-the-worlds-poor-get-a-good-education-from-markets-podcast/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/10/james-tooley-how-the-worlds-poor-get-a-good-education-from-markets-podcast/#commentsWed, 10 Apr 2013 10:48:02 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2670]]>James Tooley is currently in the US and recently visited the Heartland Institute to discuss and promote his work on private schools for the poor in developing countries. You can listen to his podcast here: James Tooley: How the World’s Poor Get a Good Education from Markets.]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/10/james-tooley-how-the-worlds-poor-get-a-good-education-from-markets-podcast/feed/0121jamesboydstanfieldThe Bottom Line – The Business of Educationhttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/02/the-bottom-line-the-business-of-education/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/02/the-bottom-line-the-business-of-education/#commentsTue, 02 Apr 2013 09:23:45 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2656]]>Education and how to make a profit from it is the focus for Evan and his three guests this week – each of them business leaders in the learning sector. From low-cost private schools in Ghana to no-frills law courses and a University of Liverpool campus in China, our guests will share their business lessons on how to build a reputation and how to price a good education. They’ll also talk about the challenges of taking on traditional, public institutions as well as the technological advances that look set to transform learning over the next 20 years. As usual, The Bottom Line cuts through confusion and spin to present a clearer view of the business world. Guests this week are Carl Lygo, Chief executive of BPP; Professor Sir Howard Newby, Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool and Professor James Tooley, chairman of Omega Schools.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/04/02/the-bottom-line-the-business-of-education/feed/0b01rgmbhjamesboydstanfieldSchool in the Cloud by Sugata Mitra wins $1 million TED Prize!!!!!!!!!!!http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/27/school-in-the-cloud-by-sugata-mitra-wins-1-million-ted-prize/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/27/school-in-the-cloud-by-sugata-mitra-wins-1-million-ted-prize/#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 02:56:47 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2614]]>Congratulations to Sugata Mitra from everyone at the E.G. West Centre on winning the 2013 TED Prize. Onwards and upwards! Last month, James Tooley was also invited to be a member of the TED Prize Advisory Council, which will work with and advise Sugata over the next three years. Hats off also to David Leat et al for their work on the SOLE Toolkit which is available on the TED website and now being download by thousands of people around the world. Talk about “impact”!

Low-fee private schooling represents a point of heated debate in the international policy context of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. While on the one hand there is an increased push for free and universal access with assumed State responsibility, reports on the mushrooming of private schools targeting socially and economically disadvantaged groups in a range of developing countries, particularly across Africa and Asia, have emerged over the last decade. Low-fee private schooling has, thus, become a provocative and illuminating area of research and policy interest on the impacts of privatisation and its different forms in developing countries.

This edited volume aims to add to the growing literature on low-fee private schooling by presenting seven studies in five countries (Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan), and is bookended by chapters analysing some of the evidence and debates on the topic thus far.

The book presents research findings from studies across three levels of analysis that have proven relevant in the study of low-fee private schooling: the household, school and state. Chapters address household schooling choice behaviours regarding low-fee private and competing sectors; the management, operation and relative quality of low-fee private schools; and changes to the regulatory frameworks governing low-fee private schools, and the impact of low-fee private schools on those frameworks.

The book does not seek to provide definitive answers since, as an emerging and evolving area of study, this would be premature. Instead, it aims to call attention to the need for further systematic research on low-fee private schooling, and to open up the debate by presenting studies that use a range of methods and, owing to the context specificity of the issue, draw different conclusions. The hope is that these studies may serve as springboards to further research.

Finally, the book does not aim to snuff out the political and vociferous debate surrounding low-fee private schooling and private provision more broadly, or to erase the complications that abound in conducting research in this area, but to engage with them.

The hope is that as the 2015 target date for Education for All and Millennium Development Goals approaches, this book may help us get closer to answering the question: do low-fee private schools aggravate equity or mitigate disadvantage?

Geoffrey Walford. Low-fee Private Schools: a methodological and political debate

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/20/the-relative-quality-of-private-and-public-schools-for-low-income-families-living-in-slums-of-nairobi-kenya/feed/0dsc_0145jamesboydstanfieldJacob Matthan champions The Beautiful Treehttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/12/jacob-matthan-champions-the-beautiful-tree/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/12/jacob-matthan-champions-the-beautiful-tree/#commentsTue, 12 Feb 2013 08:44:16 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2542]]>In this short 4 minute interview, Jacob Matthan discusses the importance of James Tooley’s publication The Beautiful Tree and explains why it is now beginning to set the agenda for future developments in education across the globe.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/12/jacob-matthan-champions-the-beautiful-tree/feed/2beautiful tree2jamesboydstanfieldInclusive business models in educationhttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/07/inclusive-business-models-in-education/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/07/inclusive-business-models-in-education/#commentsThu, 07 Feb 2013 12:24:32 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2534]]>In the global education industry there is now increasing talk of ‘inclusive business models’, especially with reference to investment opportunities across the developing world. The concept originates from the international development community, which after half a century, has finally realized that for-profit companies not only serve the rich but also have a lot to offer the two thirds of the world’s population (4 billion) that live on less than $3,000 a year. An inclusive business model is therefore simply defined as a sustainable business that increases access to goods and services to low income communities, while at the same time providing them with new sources of revenue and employment.

While examples of these models have already been documented in numerous other sectors such as banking, housing and health, it is only in the last few years that they have started to appear in education. For example the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has documented the growth of the ‘Value for Money Degrees’ model which makes university education accessible to all through a combination of innovations that increase affordability and value. An example is Anhanguera in Brazil which educates 650,000 students a year on its campuses and 100,000 students online. The Monitor Group has also documented the ‘Private Vocational Training at the Seam’ model, which enables private vocational colleges to provide low cost, no-frills, quality further education courses. In South Africa more than 700 private colleges currently provide learning opportunities for over 700,000 students.

In India, Sudiksha Knowledge Solutions is one of a growing number of innovative and ambitious for-profit ventures which provides preschool education for children living in poverty. A woman from each local community is responsible for the daily management of each school, and in return, they receive profit sharing, thereby providing school managers with an incentive to continuously improve the services which they offer. Sudiksha is now hoping to develop one million preschools across India based on a new curriculum that children can actually enjoy. Many of these new chains of schools (including Bridge International Academies in Kenya and Omega Schools in Ghana)are also adopting a ‘Pay as You Learn’ model whereby parents pay each day on or on a regular basis thereby making the schools much more affordable to those who need it the most.

In Zambia a different innovation has emerged under the brand name of iSchool, Zambia. This for-profit company offers a comprehensive online multi-media eLearning package which covers the whole of the Zambian school curriculum, including both lesson plans for teachers and interactive learning for students. Schools can purchase the ‘iSchool in a Box’ package which provides all the resources necessary to make full use of the materials, including laptops and tablets for staff and children, secure storage, power supply, internet access, teacher training, mentoring, and technical support. Schools can either opt for the iSchool Plus+ package or iSchool Lite. The iSchool Zedupad is also now available on the high street and iSchool Apps are being designed as we speak. The average cost per pupil is approximately $10 per child per term or £18.75 per child per year.

So why is the emergence of these new inclusive business models across the developing world relevant to the future development of education in the UK? While the answer may not be immediately obvious, on closer inspection it soon becomes clear that the rate of innovation being experienced in these markets is both rapid and potentially very disruptive. This is because to make products and services affordable to the poor, significant and not piecemeal innovations are required. Furthermore, the lack of government intervention and control in some education sectors is providing a conducive environment for the rapid experimentation of numerous different innovations.

A relevant example is mobile education – enhancing educational outcomes using mobile technology, which is still in the very early stages of development in most schools in the UK. However, in a 2012 report by GSMA and McKinsey, the global market for mEducation products and services is already estimated to be worth approximately $3.4 billion and is expected to dramatically increase to $70 billion by 2020. For example in the Philippines over 500 schools are experimenting with a program called Text2Teach which uses Nokia’s Education Delivery (NED) technology to deliver video content to teachers via their mobile phone. The phones are then connected to TVs in classrooms thereby allowing schools in remote places to access a locally-developed content. Another mEducation innovation is Tutor on Mobile (TOM) which connects people who want to learn and acquire knowledge with experts in India through their mobile devices. Developed by Tata DOCOMO with technology partner Voicetap Technologies, it is a ‘knowledge marketplace‘ that encourages the sharing of knowledge, and provides an opportunity for people to earn money at the same time by providing learning content.

With portable devices now rapidly evolving this is increasing their capability while at the same time reducing costs – the UK company Datawind has recently launched the worlds cheapest tablet in India at a cost of only £40 (or £25 if purchased in bulk by the government). These developments combined with the emergence of a new digital savvy and technology-literate generation the possibilities are now endless. Any UK based company involved in any aspect of education would therefore do well to keep an eye on these developments.

This article by James Stanfield can be found in the latest issue of EducationInvestor.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/07/inclusive-business-models-in-education/feed/0IMG_0250jamesboydstanfieldNew book by Pauline Dixon out soonhttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/04/new-book-by-pauline-dixon-out-soon/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/04/new-book-by-pauline-dixon-out-soon/#commentsMon, 04 Feb 2013 09:16:54 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2529]]>“This fine book has a powerful message for policy makers and donors: the quality of schools matters even in poor countries; hence, the poor are abandoning failed state schools and enrolling their kids in low cost private schools. Instead of trying to close them down, the state and donors would do well to invest in children (through vouchers and cash transfers) and give parents a choice rather than create more atrocious, monopolistic state schools where teachers are absent and unaccountable.” Gurcharan Das, commentator and author, India Unbound, CEO of Proctor and Gamble, Asia]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2013/02/04/new-book-by-pauline-dixon-out-soon/feed/0pauline dixonjamesboydstanfieldProfit in education – not a dirty wordhttp://egwestcentre.com/2013/01/07/profit-in-education-not-a-dirty-word/
http://egwestcentre.com/2013/01/07/profit-in-education-not-a-dirty-word/#commentsMon, 07 Jan 2013 11:25:58 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2423]]>In September 2011, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg declared his support for more diversity and parental choice in education, but rejected the idea of running publicly-funded schools for a profit:

“To anyone worried that, by expanding the mix of providers in our education system, we are inching towards inserting the profit motive into our school system, again, let me reassure you. Yes to greater diversity; yes to more choice for parents. But no to running schools for profit, not in our state-funded education sector.”[1]

Four months later, in January 2012, the Swedish education company International Education Schools (IES) became the first for-profit company to be awarded a contract (£21m over 10 years) to run a new publicly-funded ‘free school’. So, where does this leave the Coalition’s policy on education? Is the UK education sector now open for business? Or does it remain one of the least attractive service sectors in the UK for private investment and entrepreneurial talent?

The existing role of for-profit companies in education

Contrary to popular belief, for-profit companies already play an important role in our state funded education sector.

Premises, nursery and specialist provision

Every physical item located inside a publicly-funded school, including the school building itself, has been provided by for-profit companies operating in highly competitive markets. For-profit companies also dominate the provision of state-funded nursery schooling in many areas across the country. And for-profit companies such as the Cambian Group also receive public funds to help run pupil referral units (PRUs) and specialist schools catering for children with severe learning difficulties.[2] However, this lies in stark contrast to the primary and secondary sector where the Government continues to direct all public funds to government schools, thereby discriminating against all private alternatives, despite the fact that they may be able to provide a better quality of service. Within the European Union there is already widespread government support for a variety of private alternatives and the focus is increasingly on what works best. Greece and the UK are now the only two countries left that do not allow public funds to be distributed to a variety of different education providers.[3]

From a public policy perspective, it is therefore very difficult to understand why the Government is prepared to distribute public funds to for-profit companies that provide schooling to children up to the age of five, but not beyond that point. Or why such companies are deemed capable of delivering world-class schooling to excluded children or those with severe learning or emotional difficulties, but not to all other primary and secondary school children. What logical explanation could there possibly be for such a dramatic shift in policy between nursery schooling and primary and secondary schooling?

Local authority services

For-profit companies also work with local authorities to help deliver a variety of services to schools, from school meals to special educational needs. For example, Babcock International Plc has entered into a joint venture with Surrey County Council (Babcock 4S)[4] to provide a range of support services to schools, including consultancy, ICT programmes, training and development, and project management. According to the company’s website, Babcock 4S recently presented Surrey County Council with a £1.2 million dividend as a result of efficiencies delivered, whilst continuing to raise education standards. Other examples of for-profit companies providing education services on behalf of local authorities include Arvato Ltd in Sefton, Merseyside; Devon Norse Ltd in Devon; and Cambridge Education in Islington.

Qualifications and inspections

Edexcel, a for-profit company owned by Pearson, is the UK’s largest awarding body, offering academic and vocational qualifications and testing to schools and colleges. Even Ofsted, which has the important role of inspecting schools and maintaining standards across the sector, relies on a number of for-profit companies to carry out the majority of its school inspections. Again, this can only beg the question as to why companies such as Serco and Tribal Group are deemed capable of inspecting the quality of publicly-funded schools, but not of owning and managing the schools themselves. Common sense suggests that if these companies have developed a good understanding of what a good school should look like, they will also be better placed than many to set up, own and manage a publicly-funded school.

Free school management

Finally, as noted above, in September 2012 the Swedish education company International English Schools helped to launch IES Breckland, in Brandon, Suffolk – the first free school in England managed by a for-profit company. This suggests that while for-profit companies in principle are now allowed to manage publicly-funded free schools, public funds are still not allowed to be distributed to these same companies if they were to establish exactly the same kind of school outside of the free school process. This confusing and contradictory state of affairs is a direct result of the government’s on-going refusal to direct public funds to a variety of different educational providers. As a result the only way that they can increase choice and variety within the existing monopoly structure is to set up new government schools and then outsource the management of these schools to successful private education companies.

Box 1: IES BrecklandIn September 2012, IES Breckland became the first free school in England to be managed by a for-profit company. According to the school’s website, “IES Breckland is a school for the future, a school for the community, a school where children are treated as individuals. It will be recognised by all as the outstanding local secondary school, where high standards will be set and expected from all.“Our vision for IES Breckland is for it to be a stimulating, secure and inclusive centre of both academic and vocational excellence in which students from all backgrounds and faiths in Brandon and its surrounding area are equally valued. We will together create a school that has, as its core focus, the delivery of high quality secondary education”.

The private education sector

The notion that for-profit companies cannot be trusted to, or are not capable of, owning and managing publicly-funded schools is rather undermined by the scale and success of the private education sector. There are currently 489 mainstream private schools owned and managed by for-profit companies, educating 82,528 children, which represents approximately 15% of all pupils educated in the independent sector (82,528 of 562,885)[5]. Approximately 83% of these schools are non-selective, and 41% charge fees that are similar to the national average per-pupil funding in the publicly-funded sector.

Box 2: The for-profit sector in overviewThere are 489 independent mainstream for-profit schools in England educating a total of 82,528 pupils. The schools in snapshot:

Outside of schooling, there are also hundreds of for-profit education companies, such as the Early Learning Centre (ELC), which sell a variety of learning products and services direct to parents. The ELC opened its first store in 1974 and now has 215 stores across the UK, together with over 80 stores in 19 countries internationally. When learning materials are purchased from the ELC, it’s doubtful that parents are concerned with the legal status of the Centre or with what motivates the company to sell its products and services. If the profit motive plays such an important role in helping companies such as ELC meet the learning needs of parents and children, why should the same not also apply if ELC decided to open and manage a school? In fact, wouldn’t trusted brands such as Mothercare or the ELC be particularly well placed to expand into different types of schooling if given the opportunity?

The existing role of for-profit companies in both the public and private education sectors suggests that this type of organisation is already trusted and deemed capable of providing a variety of educational services. It is therefore difficult to justify any existing government policy which continues to discriminate against and restrict for-profit companies from competing with their public counterparts on an open and level playing field. To suggest that for profit companies are just out to make a quick buck from children’s schooling (as suggested by the Stephen Twigg, the Shadow Education Secretary[6]), is a cheap and unjustified slur against the thousands of companies and their employees working tirelessly to help deliver a variety of educational services to children across the country.

Of course, this is not to suggest that all for-profit companies operating in education will always deliver a world-class service. Just as in any other sector of the economy, the level of service provided by different education companies will also differ. However, at the risk of stating the obvious, this will be related to the way in which each company is managed, not because of a fundamental conflict between the profit motive and children’s schooling.

Open public services

An ambitious plan to bring about the end of this kind of government monopoly in the delivery of public services was set out by the Coalition Government in its July 2011 Open Public Services White Paper. Writing in the Daily Telegraph in May 2012, the Prime Minister outlined his determination to bring an end to the closed state monopoly where central government dictates what people get, and how they get it:

“I want truly open public services, where people can choose the hospitals and schools they go to, with the right information at their fingertips to make that choice; where different providers, from the private and voluntary sectors, can come in and offer new services that people can access free.”[7]

Building on the reforms previously introduced by New Labour, the delivery of NHS services has become the first government monopoly to be challenged. The right of patients to choose is now enshrined in the NHS Constitution.[8] The Any Qualified Provider (AQP) approach, allowing patients to choose from a list of qualified providers – whether state, charitable or private – when they are referred by their GP, is also now being rolled out across the NHS. The question of whether a provider of health services is non-profit or for-profit will therefore become increasingly irrelevant. Instead, the focus is now on what works best for each individual patient and guaranteeing value for money for the taxpayer. In short, public funds follow the patient. The Government hopes that choice of treatment and provider will become a reality for patients in the vast majority of NHS-funded services by 2013/14.

The rationale of this approach is relatively straightforward. Because there are now a number of different organisations that are capable of providing similar services, it is impossible for any government to decide prior to the event which will be the best provider for each different patient at any one point in time. The only way to guarantee that each patient gets access to the best possible provider is to allow each patient to the make the choice themselves.[9] Once again, these developments raise important questions. If the Government now recognises the right of patients to choose between a variety of different health providers, and is now pragmatically focused on what works best, why can this approach not now be applied to education? Why should parents not also exercise the right to choose what works best in terms of their children’s education?

Free schools and half measures

Unfortunately in education, recent reforms have been much less ambitious than in health and despite the increasing role of for-profit companies in the sector, primary and secondary schooling in England remains a government-controlled monopoly consisting of 326 local authorities and 20,086 government primary and secondary schools, educating a total of 7,451,875 children.

The governments flag ship policy has been the introduction of free schools, which are non-selective state schools (or public sector entities funded by taxpayers), independent of local authority control. However, they are not private or independent institutions. While they may be independent of local authority control, they are certainly not independent of the Secretary of State for Education or the Department of Education. To a certain extent, local government control has simply been supplanted by central government command, and while the current Secretary of State may be very supportive, it is impossible to predict what impact a possible change in government would have on the policy.

While IES Breckland is clearly a positive step in the right direction, it is unlikely to be replicated across the country by IES or any other for-profit education company within the existing policy framework. Unless companies such as IES are allowed to open new IES free schools as and where they please, then little progress will be made. Without this freedom, IES will not be able to realise the benefits that come with developing a chain of schools and so they may be reluctant to make long-term investments in the sector.[10] The profit motive will also play an important role in the development of chains of schools, as it provides companies with a clear incentive to expand and multiply. Without the profit motive there will certainly be less of an incentive to expand and replicate success.

It also remains unclear how viable these local non-profit educational trusts will be in the long run, especially after those who set them up have retired. The unpredictable nature of these trusts will certainly increase the risks facing any potential private investor. In the case of IES Breckland, Sabres Education Trust was set up by a small group of local parents. After its application proved successful, the trust then decided to outsource the management of the school to a private education company. However, this raises questions concerning the role and purpose of the education trust. For example, why not simply miss out the middle man (the trust) and allow for-profit companies set up and manage free schools themselves?

All of this confusion suggests that the Government has failed to make a clear distinction between parental demand (groups of parents demanding a new school in their local area), and the ability of these groups to set up and run a school themselves. However, there is clearly an important difference between the two. If parents want a new school in their local area, then the only option they currently have is to set up a new free school themselves. But in a normal, open market, where there was excess parental demand in a specific geographical area you would expect a number of education companies, either local, national or global, to be attracted to the location. And as soon as one provider showed an interest, more would be expected to follow.

For the free schools policy to be genuinely transformative, for-profit education companies must be free to offer their services to parents and open new schools in response to demand. If they remain fettered, the impact of free schools is likely to be muted. The number of new free schools being introduced represents a very small proportion of the school population indeed. By the end of 2013, there will be an estimated 193 free schools – with only a handful of these being run by for-profit companies. In other words, the projected number of free schools by the end of 2013 will represent just 1% of publicly-funded schools in England. Without reform, therefore, the Government’s free school policy is likely to result in the opening of a relatively small number of new schools, but will do nothing to tackle the problems which continue to plague the rest of the sector. While free schools are a welcome initiative – they should be celebrated as a glimmering of what an open and entrepreneurial education sector makes possible – not the culmination of that process.

Credit where credit is due, the coalition government have dramatically increased the number of academies from 203 in May 2010 to 1807 by May 2012. Academies enjoy the same freedoms as free schools (but are former local authority schools instead of entirely new schools) and to date, for-profit companies have been restricted from managing academies, which suggests coalition policy on academies is now lagging behind coalition policy on free schools. Therefore, for this academy programme to work these restrictions also need to be removed and for profit companies must be allowed to develop and manage chains of academies located across the country.

The education passport

If the Government was prepared to take its Open Public Services agenda to its logical conclusion in education and if it was truly interested in what works best, then it should be looking to more radical solutions. In particular, it should be seeking to address the fundamental flaw in the vast majority of state education systems around the world – governments’ propensity to distribute public funds to institutions rather than to parents. As soon as this happens, governments tend to set up their own schools which then crowd out the majority of private alternatives. The result: government monopoly. With governments then responsible for the majority of schools across the country, they have little option but to get involved with almost every aspect of how those government schools operate and what they teach.

To break this cycle, the Government could do worse than to examine the system of ‘education passports’ put forward by the Institute of Directors in 1999.[11] These payment passports are analogous to education vouchers in the economic literature. The IoD argued that a voucher system with a top-up facility could create a truly world-class education system for the 21st century. If parents chose to send their children to existing state schools, and not exercise any top-up option at a private school, then education would remain free at the point of use. In advancing the new system, the IoD also pointed out that the debate over market forces in education is not new, quoting John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty:

“If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself to helping pay the school fees…an education established and controlled by the state should only exist, if it exists at all, as one among many competing experiments.”

In a universal system of education passports, all public funds would be directed to parents, not schools, with parents then free to choose their preferred school. As a result, all questions relating to who should be allowed to set up a new school, or whether a new school should be permitted at all, would no longer be the concern of politicians, civil servants, academics or policy experts. Instead, the Government would simply give purchasing power to parents, who would be responsible for choosing between different types of provision. As in the NHS, this is the only way to guarantee that people get access to the best opportunities available.

The three key principles of the education passport system are as follows:

The value of the passport is the average cost of a state school place;

Parents are allowed to top up the payment with their own contribution towards fees;

Both parents and schools are unconstrained – parents can spend the voucher payment at any publicly-funded or private school and these schools have freedom over their waiting list choices.

Since the IoD initially recommended this reform over a decade ago, nothing has changed with reference to the fundamental problem facing the sector referenced above – that the Government directs public funds to schools instead of parents. Until this very simple and common sense reform has been introduced, the prospects for transformational change within the sector will remain severely limited.

The current controversy surrounding the role of the profit motive in education is therefore best viewed as a red herring. Instead two key questions prevail. First, should parents have the right and freedom to choose the nature and form of education which their children receive, or should the government continue to dictate? Second, should our education sector be open and inclusive, allowing a variety of different providers to compete on a fair and level playing field? When Milton Friedman was interviewed in 2003, he was questioned about his future vision of education and whether he thought that schooling would be provided exclusively by the for-profit sector? He responded with the following comment:

No, I see competition. Let parents choose. I would expect an open market where there would be a wide variety of schools. There would be for-profit schools, charter schools, parochial schools, and government schools. Which survived would depend on which ones satisfied their customers.[12]

[9] In a sign of things to come, Circle recently became the first for-profit company to take over the management of an entire NHS hospital (Hinchingbrooke). They have also opened two brand new hospitals in Reading which now provide a variety of NHS funded services. See: http://www.circlepartnership.co.uk.

[10] For a further discussion about the benefits of chains see Competition Meets Collaboration: Helping school chains address England’s long tail of educational failure, James O’Shaughnessy, Policy Exchange, 17th October 2012.

The current approach adopted by the international development community to guarantee education for all (EFA) across the developing world can best be described as monocentric and one that favours a ‘one size fits all’ optimal solution. This involves expanding the state-controlled and bureaucratic model of education to ensure that all children have access to a free government school. It represents a typical top-down approach promoting one form of institutional design where the key decisions are made by those at the top in central government, with people and local communities at the bottom playing very little if any role in the decision-making process. The EFA project also adds another level of decision making above national governments as many of the key decisions have been made by a select group of development experts working for a number of international agencies.

A polycentric approach to education for all challenges this existing consensus which assumes that free government schooling is the optimal solution to deliver the best educational opportunities to poor and low-income families living across the developing world. The growth of fee-paying private schools serving such families contradicts many development theories which predict that low-income communities are not capable of organising their own education and will therefore always be dependent on state and international aid. Instead research has now shown that when given the autonomy and an enabling environment, low-income communities are capable of financing and delivering their own educational opportunities and these opportunities do and will emerge even in the least favourable circumstances. This suggests that there is now a significant gap between existing development theories and the practice on the ground.

Due to the highly complex nature of educating an individual child and the numerous different people and factors which will influence this process, simple formulas or panaceas to guaranteeing education for all children across the developing world quickly become redundant. Therefore a polycentric approach does not recommend any particular institutional regime as a panacea for solving all education problems. This is because while one institution might reduce the costs involved in coping with one problem (such as access), it may also create incentives that increase other types of problems (concerning quality). As previously noted by Davis and Ostrom (1991):

‘As different institutional arrangements cope more effectively with some problems and less effectively with others, policies relying exclusively on any particular institutional panacea will fail in some ways that citizens and officials feel are important’ (Davis and Ostrom, 1991, p.317).

Instead a polycentric approach will promote a variety of different institutional regimes which will encourage a continual process of experimentation and learning. This approach will therefore promote a level playing field and an enabling regulatory environment which encourages a variety of different schools to grow and flourish. It also places much more trust in the parents themselves to solve their own problems by using their local knowledge and experience instead of depending on development experts who are often completely removed from their daily lives.

A polycentric approach to education for all also recognises that governance in education does not necessarily need to be provided by a central government. Instead grassroots organisations such as private school associations will be much better placed to help maintain an attractive regulatory environment. Finally, a polycentric approach to education for all is likely to be messy. Due to the complex nature of education itself this cannot be avoided.

In the polycentric approach, the public versus private debate becomes irrelevant as neither national governments nor international agencies are qualified to decide what is best for each individual child living in a multitude of different circumstances across the developing world. Instead there is a clear recognition that only parents have access to this very detailed personal and local knowledge which is required to make an informed decision concerning which school their children should attend. The role of government and international donors will be to guarantee that parents have at their disposal the greatest possible number of educational opportunities of all descriptions and so establishing a regulatory framework that will encourage a variety of different schools to grow and flourish will be of paramount importance. Any external donor interventions must also focus on the needs and preferences of the beneficiaries themselves and how any intervention is going to affect the incentives facing people on the ground.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/12/18/education-for-all-a-polycentric-approach/feed/1jamesboydstanfieldMillennium Development Goals and Schooling for the Poorhttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/12/12/millennium-development-goals-and-schooling-for-the-poor/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/12/12/millennium-development-goals-and-schooling-for-the-poor/#commentsWed, 12 Dec 2012 10:56:18 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2408]]>The Millennium Development Goals were to be met by 2015. What’s to do once 2015 has been and gone and the goals for universal primary education and equal enrolments among girls and boys have not been met? Well, it looks like the message is, “let’s start all over again and set another framework”. Really?

The post-millennium development goal agenda is now on the table. Last week a meeting was held in London with the great and the good to discuss a new framework to tackle poverty eradication…. again. But haven’t we been down this road before? What lessons have been learnt?

Well, for one, we need to be asking the poor what they want and what works for them? During a visit to the slum of Kiberain Nairobi, Kenya, walking around a government school, I asked what the head mistress thought about the introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE), a good thing according to the Kenyan government, UNESCO, Bill Clinton and the World Bank amongst others? The answer came back “No one ever asked us, no one ever does”.

It turned out she didn’t want children from the slum in her government school. “They have their own schools” she said, “Everyone knows those in the slum send their children to their own schools. It only implies a transferral from one type of school to another”. The affordable school owners didn’t want it either, and parents were sending their children to low cost private schools in Kibera anyway. So why make the change? Because governments and aid agencies around the world thought it was a good idea,… without asking the poor.

Times need to change.

When the goals were originally set low cost private schools just didn’t figure in the discussions with regards to achieving education for all, a rather meaningless attainment anyway, attending school is very different from learning something in school, what’s needed is ‘quality education for all’, and that means whatever management type the parent chooses.

Times have changed. And rightly so. The work that I’ve been doing at Newcastle University and the E.G. West Centre shows that the majority of poor children living in urban slums, shanty towns and low income areas in developing countries around the world are attending low cost private schools. It has taken parent power, wanting what’s best for their child, to make the world sit up and notice that what really counts is what’s best for the children. And parents know best. Illiterate parents in slum areas know what they want for their children. Many believe that by paying for affordable learning (£3-£4 per month) they get a better quality provision which is accountable to them. Research agrees with the parents.

So if a message needs to go out to aid agencies, politicians and decision makers it is listen to what parents want, allow choice to flourish, look at the evidence, and focus on what’s best for the children.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/11/30/affordable-learning/feed/0Affordable LearningjamesboydstanfieldA Case Study of Private Schools in Kibera: An Updatehttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/11/14/a-case-study-of-private-schools-in-kibera-an-update/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/11/14/a-case-study-of-private-schools-in-kibera-an-update/#commentsWed, 14 Nov 2012 10:35:23 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2293]]>This article provides an update on our earlier paper on the introduction by the Kenyan government in 2003 of free primary education (FPE), and its impact on low-fee private schools. First, published papers that have used our contribution as a springboard for discussion are critically reviewed. The argument and supporting evidence that the poor are not making preferred choices for low-fee private schools, but are in fact “crowded out” of government schools, are explored. It is suggested that this argument depends upon the assumption of poor quality in the low-fee private schools–lower quality than is found in government schools. This assumption is found not to be tenable, on the basis of evidence given, especially concerning pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs) and other input indicators. Second, an update is given on the data collected in 2003. Longitudinal evidence gathered in 2007, 4 years after our original data were collected, points to a dramatic increase in the number of private schools serving the slum of Kibera, Nairobi. In total 116 private schools now operate in the slum, with private school enrolment showing an increase of 130 per cent. On the important indicator of PTRs, these have increased by nearly 50 per cent in the government schools, giving an average of 88:1, compared to 28:1 in the low-fee private schools. The longitudinal findings and critical literature review are combined to suggest that low-fee private schools should be seen as partners in education for all; various ways in which international organisations are responding to the challenge of improving quality in, and extending access to, low-fee private schools are reviewed. (Contains 6 tables.)

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/11/14/a-case-study-of-private-schools-in-kibera-an-update/feed/2kibera 085jamesboydstanfieldGovernment failure in higher educationhttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/29/government-failure-in-higher-education/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/29/government-failure-in-higher-education/#commentsMon, 29 Oct 2012 09:48:16 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2211]]>As expected, the proposals in the Coalition Agreement concerning universities and further education were typically vague and non-committal. However some significant reforms have been introduced. First, the cap on tuition fees was lifted from £3,000 to £9,000. Second, students attending private universities are now eligible for a state-funded loan of £6,000. And third, part time students are now also eligible to apply for a student loan. These reforms will go some way to level the playing field across the sector and will hopefully help to attract private investment from both home and abroad.

Unfortunately, because each new student still costs the government thousands of pounds each year and because the government itself has limited funds, it is now difficult to expand the supply of university places in order to meet the increase in demand, which successive governments have helped to create by encouraging more people to attend university. The inevitable result is that over 200,000 A-level students have missed out on a university place each year. This represents an extraordinary and unprecedented level of rationing in one of the UK’s most important service sectors.

We are therefore left in the current situation in which the government can no longer afford to increase public subsidies, while at the same time it continues to restrict universities from raising extra income by raising tuition fees above £9,000. This is despite the fact that both the government and the universities agree that extra investment in higher education is required and that some students (and their families) would be prepared to pay higher tuition fees, if only the government would allow universities to increase them. It is clear that something has gone horribly wrong when the government starts to fine universities for taking on additional students!

Despite introducing the above reforms the current government has unfortunately followed in the footsteps of all previous governments and has failed to recognise one very simple but significant point – there is no such thing as a public university in the UK. Instead all universities are private institutions which are supposed to share the following characteristics: a legally independent corporate structure; charitable status; and accountability through a governing body which carries ultimate responsibility for all aspects of the institution. To be clear, they are all legally recognised as private and not public institutions and the government has failed to take this into account when intervening in the sector. Until this fact is recognised, government intervention across the sector will continue to: undermine the autonomy and independence of private institutions; completely disrupt and distort the pricing system; lead to the widespread rationing of university places; restrict private investment from home and abroad; crowd out for-profit institutions, entrepreneurial talent and philanthropic donations; restrict competition and innovation throughout the sector and last but not least continue to fuel qualification inflation.

It used to be said that because higher education plays such an important role in our social and economic life, it can’t simply left to the chaos of the market. However, many people are now beginning to question whether the endless stream of misguided and contradictory government interventions is proving to be even worse.

This article by J.B. Stanfield appeared in The House Magazine (18 October 2012), which is distributed widely in both Houses of Parliament.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/29/government-failure-in-higher-education/feed/0westminsterjamesboydstanfieldThe fortune at the bottom of the pyramid in educationhttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/12/the-fortune-at-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-in-education/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/12/the-fortune-at-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-in-education/#commentsFri, 12 Oct 2012 08:00:07 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=2066]]>While politicians in the UK continue to argue between themselves about the ethics of the profit motive in education, exciting developments in this sector are already taking place in low income communities across the developing world. While C.K Prahalad did not include an example of budget private schools as a case study in his acclaimed publication The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004), he did identify the global education industry as a bottom of the pyramid market which was now emerging as a major opportunity. This was confirmed in 2006 when James Tooley’s essay Educating Amaretch – Private Schools for the Poor and the New Frontier for Investors won the first prize in the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Financial Times’ first annual essay competition titled ‘Business and Development: Private Path to Prosperity’. Building on his research over the previous decade, Tooley recommended that the development community could assist the poor by extending access to private schools through targeted scholarships and vouchers. Private investors could also contribute through microfinance-type loans, dedicated education investment funds and joint ventures with educational entrepreneurs, including the development of chains of budget private schools.

An example of such a chain is Bridge International Academies (BIA), which was launched in Kenya in 2009 with a mission to revolutionise access to affordable, high-quality primary education for poor families across Africa. By July 2012 sixty schools had been opened in the slums of Nairobi charging $4 a month and the company now plans to rapidly scale the company and expand across sub-Saharan Africa. By 2015 they hope to have a total of 1,800 schools serving more than one million families. An important initiative introduced by BIA concerns the use of a custom-built automated computerised student payment system which allows parents to pay school fees using a mobile phone. This technology is also used to manage the majority of each school’s financial transactions, helping to create a “cashless school system”. The head office therefore distributes school budgets and teacher salaries by mobile money transfers and parents are also expected to pay school fees in the same way. As no money is handled within each school, teachers are restricted from demanding extra payments and parents are also asked to report any demands for such payments to the head office.

To help fund its ambitious expansion plans BIA have also succeeded in attracting a significant amount of private investment from a new generation of impact investors such as the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, the Omidyar Network, Jasmine Social Investments, d.o.b foundation, LGT Venture Philanthropy, Hilti Foundation and Learn Capital. Following the lead taken by these impact investors, more established companies have since taken an interest, including Pearson who became a significant minority investor in BIA in March 2011. According to JP Morgan, the potential size of investment in the primary education market alone over the next 10 years could be $4.8–$10bn, with an estimated profit opportunity of $2.6–$11bn.

On the 2nd July 2012, Pearson also launched an Affordable Learning Fund and announced another investment in a chain of affordable private schools in Ghana. Omega Schools was set up in 2009 by Ken Donkoh (a local entrepreneur from Ghana) and James Tooley as a for-profit business with a social mission to create private schools that benefit low income families and empower the aspirations of those at the bottom of the income pyramid. By July 2012 the number of Omega schools had increased to ten, enrolling 6,000 children and following the recent investment from Pearson the company now plans to expand the chain across Ghana.

An important innovation pioneered by Omega Schools has been the introduction of the daily fee which caters for the many parents that cannot afford to pay monthly or termly fees. This fee covers tuition costs, uniform, books, transport, de-worming programmes and a hot meal. Each child also receives fifteen free school days a year and an insurance policy which guarantees that every child will complete their schooling in the event of the death of a parent. The popularity of the pay-per-use business model applied to schooling is highlighted by the fact that the demand for places at each new Omega School has been high and the same model is now being introduced by a number of competing private schools in the local area. As noted on their website, Omega Schools is now looking to introduce rapid incremental innovations that, if successful, will not only yield benefits to our students, but will also have the potential to be widely replicated, yielding benefits to learners outside our system. The Omega Schools innovative Pay As You Learn (PAYL) model combined with very low overheads allowed the company to break even in 2011, which suggests that a new sustainable model of schooling is now beginning to emerge which is not dependent on either government or international aid.

The cashless school and the daily payment of school fees are two innovations that are already beginning to address the issues of financial mismanagement and the lack of transparency and affordability which have plagued government education sectors in developing countries over the previous half century. The fact that the above two companies have developed and then put into practice these two innovations in less than two years shows how entrepreneurial talent, private investment and the profit motive can have a positive impact in this sector within a relatively short period of time. It will be fascinating to watch these for-profit education companies think the unthinkable and blaze new trails over the coming years.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/12/the-fortune-at-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-in-education/feed/0fortune_coverjamesboydstanfieldOmega Schools, Ghanahttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/04/omega-schools/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/10/04/omega-schools/#commentsThu, 04 Oct 2012 16:54:33 +0000http://egwestcentre.wordpress.com/?p=194]]>On July 2 2012, Pearson, launched a $15 million Affordable Learning Fund to invest in private companies committed to innovative approaches, sustainable business models and improving learning outcomes for the poorest families in the world. The first investment from the new Fund, is a stake in Omega Schools, a privately held chain of affordable, for-profit schools based in Ghana. Accoprding to Sir Michael Barber, Pearson’s Chief Education Advisor and Chairman of the new Fund

“Low-cost private education is an important, complementary element of education in developing countries and should be seen as an active partner with governments looking to ensure all children have access to a high quality education. We are convinced that affordable schools, operated on a for-profit basis, can make a big difference.”

Omega Schools was set up in 2009 by James Tooley and Ken Donkoh (a local entrepreneur from Ghana) as a for-profit business with a social mission ‘to create private schools that benefit low income families and empower aspirations of those at the bottom of the income pyramid’. By 2011 the number of Omega schools had increased to 10, enrolling approximately 6,000 children and the company now plans to expand the chain across Ghana .

An important innovation pioneered by Omega Schools has been the introduction of the daily fee which caters for the many parents that cannot afford to pay monthly or termly fees. This fee covers tuition costs, uniform, books, transport, a de-worming programmes and a hot meal. Each child also receives fifteen free school days a year and an insurance policy which guarantees that every child will complete their schooling even in the event of the death of a parent.

The popularity of this Pay As You Learn (PAYL) business model is highlighted by the fact that the demand for places at each new Omega School has been high and the same model is now being introduced by a number of competing private schools in the local area. This example therefore helps to shed light on how the profit motive in education can help to benefit not only the children attending the school introducing a new innovation but also children attending different schools, which may subsequently copy or imitate the same innovation. A process of continuous innovation which is normally associated with more competitive sectors of the economy is therefore slowly beginning to emerge in these new education markets. Research published by the Monitor Institute (2011) identified Omega Schools as an ‘emerging phenomenon with high potential to counter the causes and consequences of global poverty’ (Monitor Institute, 2011, p.26). Again, this is not simply referring to the potential of Omega Schools operating in complete isolation. Instead it also takes into account the transformative effect that opening an Omega School could have on other schools operating in the local area. After the multiplier effect has been taken into account, it becomes much easier to see how an innovation introduced in one school can be quickly imitated by other local schools and eventually across an entire nation.

To help support and develop this new chain of private schools the Omega Schools Foundation was also set up in 2009 which acts as the companies R&D department and helps to manage any philanthropic donations which the company receives. To date, the Foundation’s research activities have been focused on addressing a number of questions including: What low cost methods could create quality lesson plans that could be used in low-cost private schools? Could a computer lab for self and peer-learning be introduced into the low cost private schools without any significant premium on fees to parents? What school design could be introduced to enable low cost schools to be built or upgraded at minimum expense?

The Omega Schools Pay As You Learn (PAYL) business model combined with very low overheads allowed the company to break even in 2011. These ten schools are therefore financially self-sustainable and do not depend on any external funding from governments or international agencies. This is a significant achievement and it confirms that when schools are given the space and freedom to develop they can flourish without government support. This raises an intriguing question – what would be the state of education across Africa if there were no government schools? Would there be more or less education and would the quality be higher or lower?

Over the past decade, low-cost private schools have burgeoned in developing countries. In some areas, the majority of children are attending the low-cost private unaided schools. Children seem to do better in low-cost private schools compared to government ones, and at a fraction of the teacher cost. Figures show that many children currently purported to be out of school are in fact attending private schools that are unregistered/unrecognised, which are often missing from official data and statistics. But many writers, including some at UNESCO and Oxfam, are in denial over the reality and potentiality of private schooling or, despite the evidence, still assume that in order to provide greater access for the poor the government sector needs to be “fixed.” According to such voices, international aid money through bilateral and multilateral aid needs to focus on government schools. This essay critically examines the arguments of some of those who discount or deny the success and potentiality of private schooling. Some initiatives are also considered that focus on aiding low-cost private schools rather than government ones.

]]>http://egwestcentre.com/2012/09/25/why-the-denial-pauline-dixon/feed/0ManchestersFinest_OxfamjamesboydstanfieldOxfamJames Tooley challenges Poor Economicshttp://egwestcentre.com/2012/09/24/james-tooley-challenges-poor-economics/
http://egwestcentre.com/2012/09/24/james-tooley-challenges-poor-economics/#commentsMon, 24 Sep 2012 15:22:48 +0000http://egwestcentre.com/?p=1971]]>In Poor Economics, MIT professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo set out their solutions for global poverty. Their key premise is that development experts have been sidetracked by the “big questions” of development, such as the role of government and the role of aid. This approach, they say, should be eschewed in favour of adopting carefully tested “small steps” to improvement. The book ranges widely, covering topics such as food, health, family planning and microfinance. Here I treat only their arguments on education in developing countries.Poor Economics points to evidence that shows that governments have not been successful in bringing quality education to the poor. Nevertheless, the authors bring their own big-think judgments to suggest why, despite the evidence, governmentally owned and operated schooling should remain central. Part of their own evidence concerns how private schooling, including for the poor, is burgeoning and outperforming government schooling. But private education cannot be the solution, they argue, because private schooling is not as efficient as it could be. The problems identified by Banerjee and Duflo are, however, clearly caused by bad public policy. I suggest that development economists are quite justified in forming and exercising judgment on the big questions, and that when they do exercise such judgment they should be aware that they are doing so.